As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam the streets and vacant homes of bankrupt Detroit, replacing residents, menacing humans who remain and overwhelming the city’s ability to find them homes or peaceful deaths.

Dens of as many as 20 canines have been found in boarded-up homes in the community of about 700,000 that once pulsed with 1.8 million people. One officer in the Police Department’s skeleton animal-control unit recalled a pack splashing away in a basement that flooded when thieves ripped out water pipes.

“The dogs were having a pool party,” said Lapez Moore, 30. “We went in and fished them out.”

Poverty roils the Motor City and many dogs have been left to fend for themselves, abandoned by owners who are financially stressed or unaware of proper care. Strays have killed pets, bitten mail carriers and clogged the animal shelter, where more than 70 percent are euthanized.

“With these large open expanses with vacant homes, it’s as if you designed a situation that causes dog problems,” said Harry Ward, head of animal control.

The number of strays signals a humanitarian crisis, said Amanda Arrington of the Humane Society of the United States, based in Washington. She heads a program that donated $50,000 each to organizations in Detroit and nine other U.S cities to get pets vaccinated, fed, spayed and neutered.

Arrington said when she visited Detroit in October, “It was almost post-apocalyptic, where there are no businesses, nothing except people in houses and dogs running around.”

“The suffering of animals goes hand in hand with the suffering of people.”

Except I feel more sorry for the dogs than I do for most of the people; the people largely brought this on themselves through their shortsightedness and their tolerance for the corruption of their leaders. The dogs… Well, they’re just doing what they do instinctively, to survive.

The city can no longer afford a decent animal control service, and so some residents actually live in fear of dog packs roaming their neighborhoods. Of course. There are union dues to be paid, after all, and someone has to maintain the UAW’s private golf course.

Detroit is the culmination of 60 years of liberalism and tolerated corruption. How long before we become the world’s “Detroit”?

The once great civilizations of the world that crumbled did so from the inside by neglecting their national security, massive debt being our most severe defect. Where is the Roman Empire? Where is Carthage? Where is Byzantium?

Actually Drew, Carthage was utterly destroyed by the Roman Republic. Even today, in the era of total war and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, we can’t really conceive of the elimination of a nation as thoroughly as the Romans did. All the men killed, the women and children sold into slavery, and the city walls and buildings pulled down. After the devastation we inflicted upon Japan and Germany in WWII, instead of exterminating them we rebuilt them.

On the other hand, where is Rome and Byzantium? Look around you. All of Western Civilization is descended directly from them (and in fact, the “Byzantines” never called themselves that – as far as they were concerned they were the Roman Empire).

Our nation may die, but unless it falls beneath the tide of Islamism, Western Civilization will continue. We may collapse, although I think it more likely the US will fragment. Some areas with enough of the old America will survive and perhaps thrive, others will fall into Mad Max style wastelands as has Detroit.